An older face, an odd mascot

This month, the time rolled around again to get my eyes tested, find out how short-sighted I am now, and consequently purchase a new pair of glasses. There were a few days of mis-judging distances and staring at the rims, but now they’re being cool. This was a big enough change to do an update of my self-portrait, which was last altered in 2010 (when I previously bought new eyewear). Behold!

My 2012 self-portrait

One of the places this guy lives is up in my site header, giving you a bit of a DreamWorks Face every time you come here. Here’s a comparison with the previous version:

Sadly, I had to delete some hair. Still being a little generous here.
Sadly, I had to delete some hair. Still being a little generous here.

I’ll have to update the photo on my Contact page too, as it’s showing it’s age (ironically by not showing mine).

So, around confronting my own mortality (well, inching closer to 30), more contributions are underway for friend and regular subject Final Boss Fight. In their 48th podcast, they discussed how Super Mario Bros. has such a bonkers premise. They started throwing words together to highlight this: What about a monobrowed pig with laser eye powers, saving his friends (magically transformed into Bonsai trees) from an evil Architect?
Hey look, it’s come to life as boxart!

I had a Master System myself. Pro Wrestling, Olympic Gold, Rampage... ah, memories.
I had a Master System myself. Pro Wrestling, Olympic Gold, Rampage… ah, memories.

Try as I might, it still looks better than the official cover Alex Kidd in Miracle World had. If you click the above image it’ll take you to the DeviantArt page, where you can download it in various wallpaper sizes (with an FBF logo replacing Sega’s).

To keep to the rule of three, I have one or two sketches that could expand into a project. Tease!

Frog Spirit colour test

Final thought: I live in the UK, and it’s a Bank Holiday (3-day) weekend. Of course, after a working week of clear skies, it’s rained every day.

Lansbury

Last month I went to a comic book convention, meeting several nice folk and purchasing merch. Just opposite from Matt Dyson of Mookeo fame (who I knew a little before his success), and down from the smiley Philippa Rice of My Cardboard Life, stood Timothy Winchester from People I Know.

I’ve only met him twice, but he’s such a lovely person we’re like friends. After buying some badges (sadly lost on the train ride home), he extolled the virtues of Angela Lansbury, an actress remembered for Murder, She Wrote but star of many more works. He asked for my help on something.

For a couple of years, Tim has dedicated a whole week to this woman, with various guest artists providing drawings to his blog. That week is now, and today my entry landed – The pirate maid Ruth from the Pirates of Penzance movie!

Angela Lansbury as Ruth

There’s been a whole bunch of fine drawings through the week, from various talented and/or enthusiastic people. This link will line up all the days on one page for ya!

Puffins, Dogs and the 3rd Dimension

February was a busy month: After Hourly Comic Day (see previous post), I had a project to return to.

The Puffin Digital Prize 2011 is not so much a prize as a contest. Running from late November to February 28th, the brief was to storyboard a children’s picture book… for iPad. At least 2 spreads had to be fully finished, while the rest could be rough layouts & sketches.

The submission guidelines contradicted themselves, there was no hotline, and the hot-email-address server broke. Nevertheless, I persevered and got it done!

The end result is 775 words, with 9 finished images (6 complete pages), 24 doodles, and a pile of digital post-it notes.

No, you can’t see it yet.

…Alright, i’ll give you one image (and not the best one):

Highland Terrier using a kite as a hang-glider
I should explain, it’s about unconventional dog racing.

This contest also reintroduced me to Fineliner pens – I was a fool to ever let them go.
Here’s hoping for a shortlisting!

And now, on to the second item. A man in Hebden Bridge is taking a year out to teach himself and others about 3D filming, and he hopes to get a project going. Here’s his article from the local paper last week.
I went to the first meeting on Tuesday – he’s a thoroughly nice chap who knows his stuff, and you should have seen the test footage!

There's some of this, but it's mainly about the new, better 3D.
There’s some of this, but it’s mainly about the new, better 3D.

I’ve passed his article on to my old uni lecturer (now the Dean of Computing), to see if any undergrads are interested. If you’re interested, give H. Clegg a shout!

Little Grey Cels

Howdy!
There are now a few images in my flickr photostream of Cliffe the Caterpillar in the wild. To cut to the chase, here are the direct links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Second off the bench, something new:

Poirot cartoon poster - click for full size
If he gathers everyone in a drawing room, watch out!

A poster for Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, if there had been a 1950s animated serial. Inspired by (and borrowing the woman from) this backdrop from When Magoo Flew.

Last topic – quick fixes. The tag search page is improved, and it seems the way this blog’s CMS manages pages broke some of the links to my contact page. Needless to say, that’s now been fixed, but it’s a good thing I put contact info in every page’s footer too!

Now I must be going; Current events include a job interview, a friend’s show, preparations for Cliffe II: Caterpillar Harder, and a family matter.

And I hope you all had your 2 minutes of silence this morning.

An animal and Animus

The second part of the “Cliffe the Caterpillar” project has been pushed back towards Halloween, but the first half has already gone to print. I’ve been invited to the opening of Cliffe Castle’s nature trail next weekend, where the finished boards will be! I’ve seen a preview sheet, but I must get some pictures of the real thing in the wild.

Aside from that, Filmstock has been continuing his web-series based on Animus (a superhero role-playing game), and asked me to help him replace an abandoned shoot with a quick ‘animatic’ episode. Two of the eight panels below:

Penny helps Scott into the garden.
Penny helps Scott into the garden.
Shadow Man heals Scott while Penny & Peter watch
Shadow Man heals Scott while Penny & Peter watch.

Finally, a few tiny tweaks to the site. Cliffe has joined the portfolio, i’ve re-jigged the social network icons, changed the Featured Works, and updated the union logos on Jailbreak poster 2011.

Update: The Animus video is now live – My drawings are around 1min 25secs in.

Many, many Caterpillars

A scant few days after my last post, I was offered a commission!

Cliffe Castle museum are revamping their materials, including the boards for a nature trail. They decided that their rather “dry” images for the children’s sections weren’t cutting it anymore. “Cliffe the Caterpillar” would be born!

Cliffe the Caterpillar - first sketches
Initial sketches. Caterpillar #9, ‘The Devil’s Hotdog’, was quickly dismissed.

The first stage of this project was to produce images of a caterpillar’s four life stages… to go on the five information boards. Ah. Easily solved by adding “emerging from chrysalis” as the fifth picture.

I provided some rough inks of a range of caterpillars, eggs and chrysalides to choose from, allowing them to mix & match parts for their ideal mascot. Once the final design was sorted, the chosen images could be polished up supremely.

Cliffe the Caterpillar - Some concept inks

We’re still hammering out who owns the rights to the final images, so i’ll play it safe and show you one Cliffe, a bit faded & through a watermark:

Cliffe The Caterpillar, life stage 2 (watermarked)

The project continues into October, with the creation of Cliffe reading a map, eating leaves and suchlike.
*Yes, that does mean there is Cliffe The Caterpillar The Butterfly. Don’t be too logical.

Pixel week

Last weekend I was contacted by a guy who had seen some of my old work – a sprite sheet for a pixel art city. He’s wondering if I can help his team out on a project. Having not done pixel art in 5 years, I wondered that myself.

So, I took the sample image he’d sent me and went isometric on it: It reminds me of Pokémon.

Carl Mitchell's pixelart brown house

That went rather well rather quickly, so I stepped up the ambition for the second image:
Carl Mitchell's pixelart White House

Yep, that’s the White House. No surrounding buildings or vegetation on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but bear in mind it started out as a test (even if it did take a few days). I think I succeeded.

My Red Mill Collection

By Red Mill, I mean Moulin Rouge, that infamous cabaret that ended up romanticized in Baz Luhrmann’s musical of the same name.

4 or 5 years ago, during uni lectures, I did a doodle in a sketchbook – Harold Zidler from the film, spouting a catchphrase. This turned into a t-shirt printed for a friend, the image created in Macromedia Flash, JASC Paint Shop Pro and Microsoft Publisher (of all things). Later on, while teaching myself Illustrator, I did a few more characters. Skip forward to today, down that slippery slope; now there are eighteen of them.

Carl Mitchell's Moulin Rouge Rosettes - Click to visit collection

I finished a couple of stragglers off this weekend. This is almost certainly the final update: I do have a vague plan for two more in the future, but they’re not getting brought out right now.

The DeviantArt collection has been brought fully up to date – the Flickr set and example on my portfolio will follow at a later date. I’m going back to learning catalogue layouts now…

p.s. Did you notice that this site’s header and footer have been changed? Yep, that was snuck in last week.